Something rustled under the wall behind me, and I whirled and froze in my tracks, my hand fumbling for the butt of my pistol but checked by sheer terror as a figure moved out from the wall, lean and lithe as a cat-and I gasped as the light fell on the tight-stretched skin of a painted face, with eyes like coals, and above, the double feathers of a Navajo Indian.

Thereon did Cypris, fairest of the blessed gods, first catch up the crashing cymbals, native to that land, and the drum with tight-stretched skin, and then Demeter smiled, and in her hand. did take the deep-toned flute, well pleased with its loud note.

The thunder grew louder as I penetrated deeper and deeper into the murk that boiled around me, becoming hideously regular, like the beating of a kettledrum, so that my ears rang with it, and I felt myself a hollow skin, tight-stretched, vibrating with each crash of sound.